This was provided by another web site, Histalk, which specifically focuses on healthcare technologies and nice they posted a copy so we can all see what’s being asked. If you read here often enough then you know I have groves of posts about the government getting their fannies kicked with technologies, be it healthcare or the financial markets as they all intertwine anyway when it comes to shareholders and stock. They all play in the same arena and thus I match the two when they relate. My series of posts called “The Attack of the Killer Algorithms” does just that and the purpose is to educate an “Algo Duped” society on how this really works, there’s no magic, just code and programmers with technologies that run on servers 24/7 making life impacting decisions about all of us. It’s been going on for years with code outsmarting the average consumer and it’s time to talk about it.

This is good to read through here an see what questions are being asked and you would maybe think that some of it has been pretty well covered in the news but then again who knows what the algorithms show:) We have those in Congress that can’t seem to keep their head out of the old default topic of abortions which does nothing more than to distract from the “real' items at hand and makes for great media coverage. I call it the “default” topic of the digitally illiterate as it always gets attention and stirs up emotions right and left but this year when it comes to voting, leave those emotions outside the door and make some intelligent decisions based on knowledge, not nonsense of emotional skirmishes that haunt us right and left in the news.

This letter without substantiation that was sent to Hospital Trade Associations in September was very political and even the DOJ got sucked in here without having some facts and examples and there were several others on the web that felt the same way. Again it’s a case of digital illiteracy and Algo Duping setting in. You can’t hardly have executives in key positions today without some IT in their background as otherwise you see stuff like this and all the technologists in the world read and shake their heads in disbelief. This is not like the old days of the old proverbial “witch hunts” and it’s much more technical but folks still go looking for those old witches, whether they are real or fiction.

Again I am not being disrespectful here at all, just logical and we could use some folks in key positions in government that use logic instead of emotional entanglement and sucking up to the Algo Duping of the lobbyists for the most part. I said this a while back about the software being sold and you do have to acknowledge that part of the sales pitch here is that the software “will save you money” so what hospital is not going to take a look when that statement is made.

Further evidence of Algo Duping exists with this $3 million dollar challenge to find an “algorithm” to predict what patients will be re-admitted. Our former HHS director was sucked right in here with supporting this one. Granted there may be some additional information that may come from some of the queries being run but the magical algorithm to have an absolute answer is just not there…algo duping once more. I do put positive efforts out there as well like this one, learning to use the queries and software to detect obvious patterns will help but again realize that private industry has had it all over HHS and the SEC for years and years, the reality. How do you think United short paid doctors and hospitals for 15 years on out of network patient care…algorithms of course and they have quants that create their business models too as do all insurers.

You kind of wonder when you look at the survey that if a query process on steroids such as IBM Watson was used if they would have a lot of this information upfront and save a lot of survey time? I think lawmakers should use such a system to create laws…would beat the heck out of what we see out there today and politicians might even learn to collaborate and get along better if they all have the same starting place with the same numbers. Sometimes we are doing nothing but shifting money around and for what? I’m not talking about the obvious fraud cases but rather these audits that recoup less than a million and cost 2 or 3 million to do. Is this wise?

If you have not watched this video yet, do it. I have been plastering it all over the place so you can see how some of the fiction is created with algorithms for profit that produce “desired” results that do not always have any audits for checks for “accuracy”. The algorithms are what has and continues to move the money with the middle class becoming nothing but data chasers and judged with “flawed data” which occurs when you combine credible with non credible data. There’s a lot to be said for “predictive analytics” but if you are not matching and querying relative information that is in fact not flawed, then you end up with junk and a lot of that gets out there and society is further “Algo Duped” with a little “spun” marketing.

Remember the day that Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert hosted the event about bringing sanity back in 2010? Well this is big part of what that was all about. When the Madoff case broke 3 years ago I made a post about the US needing a Department of Algorithms, or something along that line so again there are people besides myself who see the Algo Duping rage.

So let’s see what this survey may offer, that with mining some public information that has been discussed in great length might offer some insight and wake some folks up I hope. Recently this too was in the news about lawmakers wanting to put a halt and redesign the incentives for medical records…duh? To this I say “the short order code kitchen burned down a few years ago”…in other words to unwrap and change this successful effort would take a ton of development time to revise and why…it’s working!

So enough of this rant about information and getting educated on algorithms and will leave all with a book to read and I have mentioned it time and time again here at the Medical Quack, but it hits the absolute roots of what we are dealing with…written by a mathematician and journalist. This DOES exist “The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception” and if you watch the video above you hear all about it from the Quants that create it, a rare time when they speak out about the reality of what they do, more often than what you realize today. We sure do have a ton of duplicated efforts today and better information technologies to gather information are available to all but why are they not used outside of the financial markets that have it dialed in to the tee as they make money doing it? Who’s assessing “risk” of the government agencies making life and money impacting decisions? BD

Dark Arts of Mathemical Deception

Professor Charlie Siefe of NYU, a mathematician debunks clinical trials, and few other items to where data is spun and fools you, every day example, hear about the perfect butt algorithm and more. These are probably some things you have never thought about but again after listening to what he has to say, it’s time to think about being skeptical. Here’s a radio show that also talks about the same topics.

This video digs in a bit further with how fictitious business models are used by banks and companies do this too. The models are so complex that CEOs don’t even understand them. “Quants, The Alchemists of Wall Street will take you through how “math models” work at banks and financial institutions in a way that even the layman can understand. More videos like over at theAlgo Duping/Killer Algorithm Page. Bank of America will also tell you“IT’ is a business” how they make money.

Weapons of Math Destruction

This is a lecture where Kathy O’Neill, a former Quant who worked for a Hedge Fund (Weapons of Math Destruction) on Wall Street will tell you what is done with your retirement money and more. The banks and companies use technology to take advantage because they can. “Of course we are going to take advantage because our tools are our brains…if they could figure out a way to take advantage of pension funds they would, a good interview with explaining smart money and dumb money.

Algorithms Shape The World

This is a very good presentation done a TED Conference and really was the one that got everyone started thinking about algorithms and today it’s talked about a lot. As he says “if you’re an algorithm, life is looking pretty good, but can’t say the same for humans”. What is a black box? Nobody has any control over the flash crash. We have moved forward a bit but still we are writing the unreadable and lost the sense of some of what is happening. Nice plug for Nanex here with research.